Monthly Archives: December 2017

This is the story of an emotionally stunted thirtysomething who can only conceptualise the world around him through cultural iconography, which might make it sound like it’s a serious work about a film critic. Instead, it’s an off-kilter, open-hearted comedy…

Masaaki Yuasa’s background in animation goes back decades, but he’s probably best known to international audiences for his debut feature as a director, 2004’s Mind Game: a psychedelic trip of a movie that incorporates life, death, sex and yakuza feuds into one mind-bending package. Yuasa has mostly directed TV series, shorts or contributions to anthology movies since then, but 2017 has seen the long-awaited release of two new feature films from the man: comedy The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl and fantasy Lu Over The Wall.

Yuasa’s film and TV output is characterised by deceptively simple animation that’s prone to expressive outbursts of manic energy. Lu Over The Wall is no exception, though here it’s filtered into material that’s a little more family-friendly than some of his prior work. The story focuses on Kai, a gloomy middle school student in a small seaside town where interests outside of a future in the local businesses are largely discouraged. He reluctantly joins a band with two fellow classmates and they practice in secret. Halfway through the first practice, Kai finds they already have a fan: a music-loving mermaid named Lu who wants to sing and dance with them…

Lu Over The Wall, the latest film from Japanese director Masaaki Yuasa, is an ace new entry in the small but strong pool of animation centred around mermaid or fish-people, alongside Disney’s The Little Mermaid and Studio Ghibli’s Ponyo…

Were one to assess laziness on a spectrum, the act of having completed a film of any kind would, we feel, denote a distinct lack of lethargy. So it seems especially strange to hear this character assessment from an individual who’s due to release his 100th film, called Blade of the Immortal…

Prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike reaches 100 films to his name with Blade of the Immortal, a characteristically blood-soaked adaptation of a long-running manga by Hiroaki Samura. Pop star turned actor Takuya Kimura plays Manji, a samurai cursed with immortality following a near-death experience in a brutal battle – any life-threatening injuries he sustains, any limbs lost, will heal back up…